Unworkable? Are you kidding? It's absolutely brilliant. It's exactly what I want.
Give me a feature set. Give me a separate UI which interacts with that feature set. Let me pick and choose both of them, completely separately. That's what an API is supposed to be and do.
But it's still unworkable, like I said.
Same.
a) I know this isn't reddit, but it would go against reddiquette to downvote a comment you disagree with. You donwvote comments that don't bring anything to a discussion, which your suggestion doesn't.
b) You installed a piece of software of your own volition. If you don't want updates to your software of a certain kind then choose another software whose developers are contractually obliged not to change it. Or write your own. But don't push your ideas on us.
Picking and choosing a feature set for most applications sits in the completely infeasible plane.
Yes Skype is a comms app that supposedly "requires" cloud infra spend but... wait... they had a decentralized peer-to-peer communication system years ago but decided to move away from it. It was a poor choice if not to further their control over the product, so they could better force their crap on us when all we wanted was to send texts and make calls.
I don't see why we need to get laws involved. Also, it sounds like you're chomping at the bit to pull one over on Microsoft. Sure. Maybe you feel wronged by what Skype has become.
But how would that affect every other operation that's smaller than Microsoft that doesn't have the resources to make -- and I'm not even sure what was described -- some sort of pick-and-choose UI/API adventure.
Just doesn't seem like a coherent reaction. Can you actually pitch a solution that sounds reasonable for everyone instead of just corporations?
I find it rather interesting that there have been tons of applications that have, historically, had optional features. Many of them work quite well.